Russian Firefighter

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Russian Firefighter

Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic

A Russian firefighter rappels into the Siberian forest from an Mi-8 helicopter. Russia's aerial firefighting organization, the Avialesookhrana, is the largest of its kind in the world. Some 4,000 firefighters patrol 11 time zones in Soviet-era helicopters and biplanes, dousing the country's 20,000 to 35,000 wildfires every year.